Not Too Far Gone
by reachfortheschuyler
Summary: The zombie apocalypse strikes. Our heroes struggle to survive in a world where nothing is truly right or truly wrong anymore. Separated by forces beyond their control, our heroes fight to find each other again and push back against a world ruled by the dead. Events inspired by The Walking Dead. Features Snowing, Outlaw Queen, and Captain Swan, but other characters as well.
1. Prison Riot

**Hey all! I present to you something I've been kicking around for awhile now- a combination of my two favorite shows, Once Upon A Time and The Walking Dead. Yes, I know, I'm supposed to be working on I Love You, Bye, but I finally got this fic to the place I wanted it to be and so I couldn't wait to share it any longer.**

 **Some background info: this takes place post-Neverland, post-Missing Year, but you'll see a lot of things will be different from what happened in the show. For TWD timeline purposes, this takes place starting in the midseason finale for season 4, right when the Governor attacks the prison for a second time. You don't have to watch TWD to understand what's going on, but it's always helpful.**

 **If it seems a little confusing, I promise everything will become clearer later on. Basically, it's OUAT in the zombie apocalypse. And pretty much everyone will be in this story, except for Rumple because he stayed dead after Neverland in this world. Also, Snowing, Captain Swan, and Outlaw Queen are all present. OQers- hold on until the next chapter! You'll see I put a little twist on our favorite thief and queen.**

 **Thanks so much for reading!**

* * *

"Mom! Mom, where are y-"

Henry's cries get cut off by his hacking coughs, his lungs undoubtedly filling with the thick black smoke consuming every ounce of breathable air. Emma embeds her machete in a walker's skull, yanking it free to a spattering of blood and brain matter. "I'm here, Henry!" she shouts back, moving blindly through the destroyed cellblock. She reaches out haphazardly, grasping at what she initially hopes to be Henry's brown hair.

She gets a gurgling moan in response.

Emma thrusts her machete through the walker's eye, pushing its corpse off her blade and onto the ground. A hand grasps her shoulder and she whips around, weapon at the ready. The eyes alive with fear and worry looking back at her halt her swing. It's Henry. She exhales and grips his wrist.

"We have to get out of here, kiddo," Emma cries, looking around at the unplaceable moans and rasps that surround them.

"But the others!" Henry protests, yanking his hand free from hers.

By others he means Regina. Mom, Dad, Killian…

Emma grits her teeth, fighting against her own desperate need to find the rest of their family. She found Henry, has him, can make sure he's safe and alive. The chances of finding anyone else in all this chaos, all this bloodshed… it's not worth it, not if Henry's life is at risk. "They'll be fine," she manages to choke out, throat seizing up from all the smoke.

A walker chooses that moment to lunge at them and Henry sends a well-placed kick to its stomach, knocking it backward far enough that they can sprint past, through the rubble that was once the door of the cellblock and into the sunshine, fresh air, and chaos of outside.

Walkers are _everywhere_. And the places unoccupied by the undead are filled with the dead, most waiting for the clock to tick down until they rise with the walkers. Across the courtyard toward the road, Emma can just make out the tail end of the bus as it disappears behind the cover of the forest surrounding the highway. A twist of relief and hesitation pull at her stomach, but she doesn't have time to dwell on who might be in the bus and who might not be. Henry disposes of a walker coming up next to them and soon enough, they have the attention of the general mass of the undead moping about the courtyard.

"Fuck," Emma groans as the herd quickly closes in on them. She swings her assault rifle around from her back and starts mowing down the front lines of the pack, backing Henry up toward the wall. He grabs onto the drain spout nailed to the brick and starts to ungracefully climb up toward the metal bridge connecting the destroyed cellblock to the other. Emma soon follows him, walkers knipping at her heels. No sooner do they both stand up on the bridge than they're moving again, across the metal links to the other cellblock, shifting around the side of the building using the newly formed cracks and holes in the bricks as footholds and handgrips.

From their new vantage point, they can see the field clearly, smoldering fires and walkers and dead bodies and _his_ tank- but no sign of Snow or David or Regina or Hook or her baby brother or Ruby or Grumpy or- or _Neal._ Dread and anger and hatred stir in Emma's stomach again at the memory of Neal's head swinging sideways off his shoulders, the Governor holding Hook's stolen cutlass, dripping blood. Henry had seen it, had seen his father perish and yet he had been the one to keep his cool, to realize they needed to get out of there, to get the sick people on the bus and get it moving. And he's keeping his cool now, despite not seeing any of his family members alive at the moment.

"Fences are down," he says numbly, echoing Emma's earlier observation that without the fences, the prison was defenseless. It's a weighted statement, and she knows he knows they can't salvage it. The little piece of paradise, of sanctuary, of _home_ that they had created here is gone, ripped away by the hands of a vengeful man and the teeth of the undead. Mother and son exchange a sad, knowing glance before continuing their way around the side of the building, dropping to the ground away from the herd that had been following them. They deposit a few walkers as they make a break for the now-destroyed fence gates. And then they _run._

* * *

The moment the Governor plunged Hook's cutlass into Neal's neck, Snow began to shoot. She didn't know what she was shooting at, who she was shooting at, but she didn't care. Didn't need to. The sound of Emma's strangled cry as she began to pull her own trigger was enough to know that anyone standing behind that monster of a man deserved to die. Regina and David had followed her lead, firing through the chainlink of the fence in a desperate attempt to stop the Governor's assault.

Useless. Deep down, Snow knew it was from the very beginning. Everything's going to fall apart and a few bullets aren't going to do anything to stop it. Still, she shoots. For Neal, for Emma, for Henry, for her son. They at least deserve a fight.

A bullet whizzes by her ear, so close she can feel the wind whoosh past. Snow blinks and reassesses, her finger faltering on the trigger when she sees more of the Governor's people than before. Those monsters aren't letting up. And they're getting closer.

"David!" Snow calls in warning, firing a few more shots and cursing when she reaches the end of her mag. She lets it fall to the ground with a clatter.

David glances over quickly from his spot a few feet away, unrelenting in the bullets he unleashes from his assault rifle. "Run for the bus!" he shouts back. "I'll cover you!"

Snow and Regina exchange a lightning glance before booking it for the bus. Snow looks behind her as she runs, waiting to see David turn and follow. There's too many bullets coming towards him, towards them, and he's firing back but there's _too many._ Regina yelps in surprise and Snow whips back around. At least a dozen walkers are lurching toward them. The two women pause for a split second, feet stumbling out of uncertainty, but then Regina grabs Snow by the arm and starts pulling her in the opposite direction, toward Cellblock B.

"David!" Snow yells, alerting him to their change in direction.

He looks back to see them, and it's only a quick glance, maybe a half second, maybe less, but it's long enough. Snow doesn't see the bullet catch his shoulder, but she hears it, the shout of surprise and pain bursting unbidden from David's mouth. He drops his hands from his gun, the shoulder strap being the only thing that prevents it from falling to the ground. There's blood, gushing between David's fingers where he grips tightly, and more bullets, the Governor's monsters unrelenting and unyielding even as her husband stands wounded.

Regina's still pulling her toward the cellblock, but Snow's feet slow and become uncoordinated. David staggers back, away from the fence, tripping his way toward them, his gun bumping against his stomach and thighs. "Go, go!" he gasps, stumbling into them. "The bus!"

"We can't! Walkers!" Regina shouts over the cacophony of battle.

David nods absently and shoves them forward, toward a water barrel where they duck for cover. "How'd the walkers get through?" he sputters, breathing deeply to catch his breath.

"The tank. It knocked down the fences," Snow explains, peeling David's fingers away from his shoulder. His shirt is stained dark red, flesh and muscle broken from the shot.

"Check for an exit wound," Regina orders, peering around the side of the barrel and immediately snapping back, a bullet flying past where her head had been.

Snow pushes David forward, leaning over him to check his back. Sure enough, there's another wound on the other side of the first. "Good," she breathes. "We can treat it."

"We have to get out of here first," David grimaces as Snow presses her hands against his shoulder.

"Did anyone see Emma?" Snow shouts.

"I lost track of her after we started shooting," David grits out, teeth clenched.

"What about Henry?" Regina asks frantically, knuckles white as she grips her gun. "Did anyone see Henry?"

"I thought I saw him run back into Cellblock A," Snow speculates and just like that- Regina's up and running across the courtyard, bullets flying all around her.

"Shit," David hisses, lurching to his feet and following after her, Snow right on his heels.

But, of course, it's then, when they're exposed and vulnerable, that a huge explosion rocks the entire courtyard, knocking all three of them off their feet.

 _The rocket launcher on the tank._

Snow's ears ring and her head pounds as she slowly sits up, the world moving in slow motion before everything speeds up to double time.

David slowly gets to his feet, pieces of debris and dust falling from his clothes as he stands. He reaches down and helps Snow stand, swinging his gun over his shoulder. Regina had fallen a few yards away and she slowly gets up herself, shaking dust from her hair.

Snow looks up at the cellblock- or what used to be the cellblock- and almost drops her gun. The entire front wall is gone, collapsed and smoldering in a heap in the ground. The internal structures of the building are twisted and broken and mangled. Smoke starts to billow from various parts of the destroyed building, distorting any clear view of the people who may or may not be inside.

A strangled cry leaves Regina's lips as she too stares up at what had once been part of home, at where Henry had been.

Snow cautiously but urgently inches up beside Regina and reaches out for her arm. "Regina," she tests, trying to pull her out of her stunned state. Regina doesn't move, doesn't even acknowledge her. "Regina," she tries again. "We have to _go_." She hears the sound of brain meeting blade behind her and glances back to see David pulling his knife from a walker's skull with his good arm. Snow gives Regina's arm a soft but urgent pull and the queen finally looks at her. "We need to go," she repeats.

Regina shakes her head, eyes wide and empty. "Henry," she breathes.

"Will be devastated if you don't make it out of here," Snow points out, moving to block her view of the destroyed cellblock. "There's nothing we can do now. We have to go."

It takes a moment, another second of internal war, but eventually Regina concedes, unsheathing her knife and turning away from the destruction before her. Snow breathes a quick sigh of relief and unhooks her machete from her belt loop. She decapitates one walker, two, three as they make their way across the courtyard and suddenly they're at the edge, the decimated yard the only thing between them and the woods. She turns to take one last look at their crumbling piece of temporary solace before joining in the sprint across the field toward the safety and cover of the trees.

* * *

Keep moving. Just… keep moving. That's all Emma allows her mind to say as she continues down the road, hands shaking and breath ragged. One foot, then the other. Don't think about it, don't think about anything other than moving, getting to safety, keeping Henry safe. Her thoughts are muddled, unfocused, and as hard as she tries, every so often, unwelcome faces invade- Snow, David, Regina _._ Damn it, stop thinking, keep moving. There's bound to be a town nearby or a neighborhood. An abandoned car at least that they can find some sort of shelter in for the night- Ruby, her baby brother, Grumpy… damn it, where can they find food? Or water? Their ammo is dangerously low and she lost her axe in the fight. Henry still has his knife though so hopefully they don't encounter any herds, just one or two walkers will be manageable enough- Killian… god _damn_ it.

"Mom," Henry says suddenly, giving her an excuse to stop thinking.

"Yeah, kid?" she asks, never slowing her pace. Slowing down is bad. Slowing down means they could be found by any residual members of the Governor's forces. Henry, though, doesn't appear to share the same thought. He's a good ten feet behind her when she glances back at his lack of a response. "Henry, c'mon, keep up, we need to keep moving."

"Mom, we can't… what if they made it out? We need to go back to find them," he insists, voice breaking.

"Henry, we can't go back there," Emma replies even though every fiber of her being is screaming for her to do exactly that. "It's too dangerous. That place is a graveyard now."

"So we're just going to leave them there?" Henry cries incredulously. He stops walking and stares at her as if she's a stranger. His look, for whatever reason, gets her blood simmering and her defenses start going up. "I don't care if they didn't make it, I don't care if they're walkers. Dead or not, we take care of our own," he yells.

"That's what I'm doing," Emma snaps back, hating the anger in her voice but having no control to stop it. "I'm taking care of my own, of you. And that means we need to keep moving."

Henry shakes his head, face contorted in anger and sadness and despair. "Yeah, keep moving so we can get far away from what you did."

Emma blinks. The bitterness in her son's tone is unnerving and his accusation throws her for a loop. "Excuse me?" she manages to respond because surely Henry can't be blaming her for-

"This is your fault!" he shouts, throwing his gun to the ground with a clatter and a thunk. His sudden burst of anger almost makes her jump. "Hook and Dad wanted to keep looking for the Governor so they could kill him before he did something like this! But you told them to stop, that it wasn't worth it, that he was probably already dead. And look what happened! If you hadn't told them to quit-"

"If I hadn't told them to quit, they would have died trying!" Emma interrupts.

"They died anyway!" Henry yells, his face red and heated with fury. "And everyone else died with them!"

"Henry, I know you're upset and you're scared and you're pissed off, but you _cannot_ blame me for this," Emma replies, trying to find an ounce of calm to steady her quivering voice. "I did what I thought was the right decision for everybody and that is _all_ you can ask of me."

Henry shakes his head and his mouth contorts into a bitter smile. "Yeah, I guess it is. Because I certainly can't ask you to protect me. I'll just end up dead." He picks up his gun and shoulders past his dumbfounded mother, keeping his eyes to the path in front of him.

Emma blinks rapidly, at a loss. Henry's upset, he's desperate, scrabbling to make sense of everything just like she is, but knowing he's lost faith in her is, well, unsettling. After what happened this afternoon, he's the only reason she hasn't put a gun in her own mouth yet.

"Henry," she croaks, turning around to see her son's shrinking form. He's not walking toward the prison, she has that small ounce of relief, but he doesn't stop when she says his name. "Henry," she calls again, louder this time, but still he does not stop. She takes a steadying breath and hurries to catch up with him, her battles for the day far from over.

* * *

Everything hurts. Everything _fucking_ hurts. And it is _loud._ It is so bloody loud Hook could swear his ears are going to fall off. Where the hell is he? And what the hell happened? He remembers fear and anger and desperation… Emma was yelling and so was David and there was blood…

As the haze of unconsciousness slowly wears off, he realizes his eyes are closed and he struggles to open them, the glaring light above him burning like the light of a thousand suns. What light could be so bloody bright that- oh. The light _is_ the sun. He's outside, he gathers, eyes opening just barely more than a squint. He blinks repeatedly, his eyes slowly adjusting to his surroundings and soon he can confirm that yes, he is outside, and he's laying down, in fact. He achingly sits up, feeling as if he had been crushed by a thousand pound boulder. Looking around, he barely recognizes the rubble that used to be the prison. Smoke and crumbling walls and debris and dead bodies compose the scene, a far cry from the scenic refuge of earlier.

The gurgling and moaning of the undead jar him from reflecting on the macabre sight before him and he jerks suddenly in response to the realization that walkers could be coming for him. The motion causes him to wince and goddamnit, he must've taken a heavier blow from that tank than he originally thought. He hears the walkers, but he can't see them and that's when he realizes the sounds are coming from _below_ him.

He's on a ledge of broken concrete, jutting out from the destroyed cellblock and overlooking the main courtyard which, of course, is filled with more walkers than he's seen since the farmhouse. "Fucking hell," he breathes, turning to either side to gauge the full extent of his undead foes. As he moves, his foot brushes against something hard and he sees his machine gun at his toe. Well, thank the gods for that at least. He reaches for the gun, resting the barrel on the upcurve of his hook and tries to spot any moving body that still has life within it. He sees no breathing human, but he doesn't recognize any of the walkers either, so that, at least, gives him some comfort.

Perhaps the others got away. Perhaps they are alive just up the road aways. But Emma had run to the cellblock, he remembers, trying to find Henry before the rocket launcher had struck. Gods, he didn't want to think about what might've happened to her… but he can't very well leave the prison without seeing for himself or else he knows he'll be spending the rest of his probably short life thinking of what ifs and maybes. He can make it back into the cellblock without going through the walkers if he's careful, so slowly, gingerly, he stands. His joints creak and his muscles protest, but he makes it onto two feet, testing his weight on one foot and then the other. A quick roll of his shoulders and then he's moving, stepping cautiously around piles of debris before he's dropping down a level onto what had once been a wall, his body entirely hidden from the walkers outside now. Another jump and he makes it to the ground, a shock of pain running through his leg at the impact.

He raises his gun as he scans his surroundings, but seeing no foe, undead or otherwise, he starts hurrying in the direction of Cellblock A, the one Emma had been in. It's barely recognizable when he gets there, twisted metal and broken concrete the only thing he sees. There is no one there- no dead bodies, no walkers, and certainly no breathing humans. Well, that's a comfort at least, but it doesn't give him the answers he's looking for. He moves from Cellblock A through to Cellblock B, the one they had been living in since they had secured the prison all those months ago. It is, amazingly, almost completely undamaged. There are signs of a hurried exit, random items scattered about the floor, things dropped in a rush, the cell doors thrown open at all different angles.

Hook urgently strides over to his and Emma's cell, knowing she won't be there, but hoping all the same. It's empty of course, and seeing it vacant causes something in him to break. The thin strand of hope he had been grasping at since he awoke slips away and he feels an uncontrollable anguish gripping at his sides, his mind, his heart. He drops his gun to the ground with a clatter and stumbles blindly, uncaring, to the makeshift bedside table they had constructed. He fumbles through the drawer, knocking aside little knick knacks and odds and ends until he finds it- the small Polaroid he had taken of Emma, sleeping so peacefully in the guard tower all those weeks ago. The sight of her face, so carefree and calm, causes the creeping anguish inside him to melt into something warmer, something sadder, almost as if the tears he won't let fall down his face are running through his veins instead.

He closes his eyes and presses the picture between his palms in something resembling a prayer, a hope that somehow Emma had made it, that somehow everyone had made it. He coughs, feeling the remnants of the illness that had nearly killed him still trickling through his body. Emma had saved him then, she had saved him so many times he was starting to lose count. He doesn't know if she needs saving now, but he'll be damned if he lets anything happen to her while he still lives and breathes. He opens his eyes and slips the picture into his pocket. Picking up his gun, he walks out into the center of the cellblock and looks around. Their life here is over, that much is clear. But maybe there is a life for them somewhere else. He just has to find the reason he's still living first. He has to find Emma. Or he will die trying.

* * *

The trickling of the stream is thankfully the only sound that breaks the quiet of the forest. There's no gurgling, no moaning, no chomping and stumbling noises to disturb the tranquility of the woods and for that, Snow is grateful. But there is also no talking, no laughing, no sounds of productivity and prosperity, no babies babbling…

She had seen her son's empty carrier as they had fled the prison, had seen the blood smattering the blankets and cushions of the seat that was supposed to protect her son. Her son- still yet unnamed due to all the chaos right after his birth and everyone's habit of calling him the "Little Prince" seeming to fit so well. They had discussed names, countless monikers to identify their second child, but none stuck, none seemed to fit. And now there was no point in picking a name because there was no longer a baby to name. They had failed another child, failed to keep their second chance safe. First Emma, who was most likely lost to them forever again, and now this second, unnamed, unidentified child who never had a chance to grow to resent them for their failures. They weren't meant to be parents, Snow reasons, or maybe she just wasn't meant to be a mother.

She doesn't hear David say her name at first, her eyes too fixed on the stream before her, her mind a thousand miles away.

"Snow," he repeats, and her ears finally catch the sound, catch her name because she at least has a name. If nothing else, she has a name. Her son didn't even have that. She wasn't meant to be a mother.

"What?" she finally responds, her head jerking toward his general direction, but her eyes staying focused on the running water at her feet.

"I think we'll camp here for the night. Water's close by, we're elevated, good tree cover," David explains, sitting down next to her, forearms resting on propped knees. His shoulder is bandaged and the bleeding has mostly stopped. He'll be sore, but he'll live.

Snow nods absentmindedly and thinks somewhere in the back of her mind how she doesn't deserve to have a husband who knows how to take care of people so well when she can't even take care of her own children. David was meant to be a father. If only he had loved someone meant to be a-

"Snow," he says quietly, his tone shifting in a way she knows he's stopped thinking about campsites and elevated ground.

Her eyelids stutter as she blinks, willing the tears to wait so she can get through this conversation.

"There was nothing we could do," David murmurs, his eyes fixed on the water of the stream. "We didn't know that was going to happen. There's no way we could have prepared for-"

"What did you want to name him?" Snow interrupts, turning her head finally to look at her husband. David turns to meet her gaze, caught off-guard by her question. "I know we could never agree on one, but there must've been one name you liked."

David licks his lips and shakes his head. "None seemed right. None still do."

Snow sniffs, knowing she was losing the battle against her tears. "Our son-" she chokes. "And Emma… Henry-"

David opens his arms and she goes into them willingly, desperately, collapsing against the never failing strength of him. He's not feeling strong, she knows, but at this moment, his strength outweighs her weakness and that's all she needs. He places a gentle kiss on her temple and whispers into her hair that he knows, he knows, he feels it too, he wishes for them too.

"We failed them again," she croaks, her face pressed against his neck, her tears dampening his shirt and skin. She feels his grip on her tighten and a tear that is not her own falls on her arm. Her head moves against his good shoulder as he takes a shuddering breath.

"We can't… we can't blame ourselves for this," he manages, voice tight and shaky. "They… they wouldn't want us to."

Snow takes a gulp of breath. "How can we not? We were supposed to keep them _safe,_ keep them alive and now they're gone and there's nothing we can do to bring them back."

David takes a deep breath and slowly pulls back until their foreheads are touching, noses bumping against each other. "You're right," he breathes. "They're gone and we can't change that, but right now, we have each other, and I thank whatever gods have left us in this damned world that you are still with me." His hand touches her shoulder, runs across her collarbone to cup her cheek. "And that, despite everything, gives me hope."

It's not enough, won't be enough to fill the recently gouged holes in her heart, but for now it's enough to calm her, to make her think that they'll be able to make it through the night at least. She kisses his lips, softly, gently, a wordless thank you for being the strength in a world of weakness. She knows the roles will reverse at some point, that she will have to be strong so he can be weak when he needs to be, but for now, her Prince Charming will protect her until she can protect him once more.

They slowly pull apart until they can look at each other clearly, David's fingers remaining firmly entwined with her own. "Now," he begins, his voice staying soft, "We have to focus on what we need right now. I'll look for some food if you want to take Regina and-"

He stops when a wave of realization washes over them both. They both look around frantically, heads whipping to either side before their eyes lock once more. Regina had been with them, not ten minutes earlier when they first came across the stream, but now there was no sign of her and with the fragile emotional state she had been in, Snow sees red flags popping up everywhere. She and David exchange a look and a sigh before they both scramble to their feet, dreading what they might find as they search for the queen.

* * *

 **Reviews make me smile!**


	2. After

**A/N: I lied to you guys before. This takes place post-Neverland, but the Missing Year never happened. When Rumple killed Pan, that was the end of it and there was no need to go back to the Enchanted Forest. It'll make sense why later.**

 **Also, filmyfurry, this chapter is 100% for you. You have no idea how much your review on the last chapter cheered me up. Honestly, that's the nicest and longest review I've ever gotten, so thank you so so much for that! I think you'll like that a certain thief pops up in this one!**

* * *

Ruby is trying to keep up, she really is, but the cut on her right calf is making it awfully difficult to maintain such a hurried pace. They need to stop, catch their breath, _think_ for a moment. Process what had happened. She doesn't want to, god, she doesn't want to think about anything that had happened today, but good Lord if they don't just _stop_ for one goddamn second-

"Leroy," she pants, bending over and putting her hands on her knees. "Can we… I need a minute."

The dwarf is a good ten paces in front of her, and he seems extremely reluctant to stop, but stop he does. Turning, he looks back at her, one hand holding his axe and the other cradling the baby prince against his shoulder. Snow and David's child is, unbelievably, sleeping peacefully, barely a scratch or mark on him. Leroy shifts the child up higher on his side and glances around, his face tight and suspicious. "We can't stop here, sister," he grumbles. "Can't get a good view on anything."

Ruby rights herself and limps toward him, still panting but nodding. "I know, I know, it's just- my leg is killing me. I can't run as fast you can right now."

Leroy looks down at her leg and grimaces. "I'm surprised you got this far without needing to stop." He slings his axe through his belt loop and holds out the little prince toward her. "Here, take the kid. I'll bandage your leg."

"I thought we couldn't stop here," Ruby half-teases, realizing they really can't stop so close to the prison, not with all the walkers nearby and who knows if any of the Governor's people are still out here… but she takes the baby all the same, cradling him against her chest. He gurgles in his sleep, tiny fists opening and closing again, but his eyes stay closed, blissfully unaware of the horrors that have just befallen his family. Poor little thing, Ruby thinks sadly, letting his tiny mouth suck on her knuckle. The infant prince had once been a sign of so much hope, so much joy, but now he just reminds her of his parents and his sister and his nephew and how life is so much more precious now than it had been before. All life is precious, including the tiny one she now holds in her arms. If only the little prince's life wasn't doomed to be so short.

Leroy sets his bag on the ground, crouching to search through it before he miraculously pulls out a roll of clean gauze. Ruby blinks in surprise. "How the hell do you have that?"

The dwarf shrugs. "I've had this bag packed since our _first_ clash with ol' One Eye. Got some gauze, a few bullets, bottle of water, a knife-" He pulls an empty baby bottle out from the bottom. "Even thought of the pint-sized prince."

Ruby cocks her head at him curiously. "You've had all this ready for two months?"

Leroy stuffs the bottle back into the bag and snaps it closed. "Everyone else mighta been fooling themselves into thinking that son of a bitch wasn't coming back, but I wasn't going to get caught with my pants around my ankles."

Ruby huffs a laugh at that, starting to sway from side to side to keep the baby from waking. "Well, I wouldn't say none of us thought he wasn't coming back, but we sure were hoping."

"Hope doesn't get you far these days," Leroy mutters, unraveling the gauze in his hands. "Snow is proof of that."

Ruby pinches her eyes shut, pain lacing her features as his words cut at her skin. The thought of her friend hurts too much, too soon and she takes a steadying breath so she doesn't drop the baby from her sudden lack of strength.

"Sorry," Leroy mumbles after a moment passes. There's pain in his voice, an unspoken admittance that the thought of Snow hurts him just as much.

Ruby swallows thickly and shakes her head. They're both on edge, both raw. Filters don't really seem to fit anymore. "It's fine," she chokes, absently rubbing her palm over the prince's stomach.

Leroy chews on his lip, staring at the ground for another moment, the silence between them lengthening before he exhales and sits properly on the forest floor. "Come here," he sighs, gesturing for her to sit beside him. It's a struggle, with a baby in her arms, but she manages, stretching her injured leg out before him. He begins to gingerly dress her wound, clearing away dirt and grime with a clean swatch of his shirt before carefully and attentively wrapping the gauze.

Ruby runs her fingers through the wispy strands of the youngest (only remaining) Charming's hair and glances around as Leroy works. She guesses the air doesn't actually smell like sulfur, but the scent still fills her nostrils from the explosions and gunfire of the hour before. She had been trying to get the sick people on the bus, trying to corral as many souls as possible when the walkers had begun to infiltrate the courtyard. She's not sure when Leroy had made it to her side, but soon they were neck-deep in the undead together, swinging knives and axes at any decaying brain that lunged their way. They had been pushed back toward the administration building where the children were being quarantined when the wail of a baby had caught their ears. The poor little prince had been left on the ground in his carrier, abandoned by whoever had been carelessly entrusted with his well-being. Leroy had been the one to grab him, the one to discard of the walker trudging toward the infant and keeping him safe against his chest. How they made it out of there, with a baby nonetheless, Ruby didn't know, but somehow- by some miracle- they did. If only the others had experienced the same miracle-

"How'd you get this, anyway?" Leroy asks, drawing her out of the past and back into the here and now.

Ruby shakes her head. "A piece of debris caught me when the cellblock exploded. Another piece almost got my head, but I was able to duck in time." She winces when he pulls the gauze tight.

He doesn't apologize, just keeps wrapping until he reaches the top of her wound and ties it off, still having a decent amount of unused cloth leftover. "There," he declares. "Hopefully that'll keep you from falling apart for a little while."

Ruby rolls her eyes, but half-smiles anyway. She looks down at the prince and suddenly her vision goes blurry with tears she didn't realize were forming. The baby yawns as she sniffs and tilts her head back, blinking furiously. "How are we going to do this, Leroy?" she whispers, keeping her eyes on the leaves above them. "Just the two of us with a baby? It's nearly impossible."

Leroy huffs and stuffs the gauze back into his bag. "Never counted you as quitter, sister."

"I'm not quitting, I'm being realistic," Ruby counters. "If the lot of us couldn't make it all together, how can you possibly think just us will be able to make it?"

Leroy shrugs. "As far as I see it, there is no 'making it' and 'not making it' anymore. You keep surviving until you don't. Everyone has to die at some point; people just seem to be doing it at a much quicker rate these days."

"That's not much of a comfort," Ruby mutters, shifting her eyes down to the baby.

The dwarf exhales and unhooks his axe from his belt. He digs the tip of it into the dirt, creating a tiny trench and hill. "Well, that's not to say we have to give up. I've got you now and you've got me and we've both got the kid, so maybe, if we just keep surviving, we'll get to a point where we can live again." He goes quiet for a moment, still digging shallowly in the dirt. "We were _living_ at the prison, not just surviving. It felt like home, like we belonged there." He pauses again. "Living is being able to just _be_. Surviving is different because you don't know if you'll still _be_ the next week, next day, next hour." He looks at the young Charming and shakes his head. "He should be able to just be. We gotta get to a point where we can let him just be," Leroy sighs, eyes shifting up to meet Ruby's.

She nods, swallowing at the weight of the moment. It's not about her anymore. It's not about Leroy, either, it's about the prince, the innocent life who deserves to have whatever grim chance the world holds for him. She wonders if this is what being a parent feels like. "Okay," she breathes, nodding still minutely. "We'll keep going. For him."

Leroy returns her nod before huffing out a laugh. "Kinda makes you wish they had gotten around to naming the kid."

"Hook had wanted Little Asskicker, remember?"

"This is why everyone should just be a dwarf. Your name is given to you the moment you pick up your axe," Leroy muses, giving his weapon a good shake.

"Should we pick a name?" Ruby asks, eyebrows quirking out of uncertainty. They might be in charge of protecting the child now, but he's still Snow and David's son. Would it be wrong?

"You got one in mind?"

Ruby shakes her head. "No, not really. Snow and David shot down all the ones I liked."

"Hmm," Leroy hums, using the back end of his axe to scratch his chin. "What about-"

He's cut off by the sound of a distant scream and suddenly both he and Ruby are lurching to their feet. "What was that?" Ruby whispers, clutching the child closer to her chest.

Leroy looks around quickly before picking his axe up from where he had dropped it on the ground. "Stay here," he commands, adjusting his hat and starting off in the general direction of the scream.

"Are you crazy? We can't split up now!" Ruby protests, grabbing his bicep to stop him.

He shakes her off him and gives her a withering look. "Listen, sister, we don't know what that was and I am not having you walking into something nasty with a bad leg and a baby in your arms."

"So don't go at all! For all we know, there could be a thousand walkers over there!" Ruby insists. "It's not worth the risk."

Leroy gives her a pointed, slightly surprised look. "For all we know, that scream could have been Snow. Or Emma. Or Regina. I'm pretty sure they're worth the risk."

"But what if it's not one of them?"

The dwarf shrugs. "Still could help someone who needs it. I think that's worth it too." He reaches into his bag and pulls out his knife. "Stay here. If I'm not back in fifteen minutes, don't come looking for me," he orders, handing her the knife. He doesn't give her another chance to protest and begins to march toward the sound of the noise. Ten minutes later, he thinks maybe he should have stayed with them after all when he hears a scream that sounds unmistakably like Ruby.

* * *

Henry. Everything is Henry and nothing is Henry and Henry is everywhere and Henry is nowhere and Henry, Henry, Henry. Regina feels as if she's stumbling and tripping through the woods and she probably is, but she can't tell because her mind is so far away from anything around her because nothing around her matters and the only thing that matters is Henry and he is not around her and probably never will be again.

How can she go on without the only reason she had been pushing on in this hell of a world in the first place? She can't. She _can't,_ not without him. He's either dead, exploded into a million pieces by the shells of the rocket launcher, or he's undead, brought back to the land of the living without being alive and she doesn't want to think about either option but she can't stop, won't stop thinking about Henry. He only lives in her memory now and she'll be damned if he'll fade from that existence as well.

She is, indeed, stumbling and tripping through the woods, though she is mostly unaware of where she is going or how she places her feet. When she had left the spot David had deemed safe enough to rest, her mind had plunged into the wallowing depths of childless despair, chased by bitter denial that this was her reality now. As they ran from the prison, she had been too worried about sprinting and stabbing and slicing their way out of certain death to think fully about the debilitating notion that Henry was gone, but the very edges of her mind had been shouting that she had lost her son. Again.

And then it had gotten quiet. There had been no more walkers or Governor minions and she had been left alone with Snow and David and suddenly she couldn't breathe. Her body had quieted and then her mind had screamed and her lungs had collapsed and the world had gone blurry. Slipping away from the Charmings had been easy. They had been so consumed by their own grief of lost children that she doubted they even gave her a second thought, though surely they had realized she was not in a stable frame of mind. She doesn't know where she is going or what she is doing but she can't stop because stopping allows the anguish crowning her heart to sink in deeper and she doesn't think she could survive pain like that.

Except she does stop because suddenly she hears twigs snapping and leaves crunching and the unmistakable gurgling moan of the undead. Whipping around, Regina sees one lone walker stumbling through the brush and when its eyes meet hers, an overwhelming urge strikes her. She has her gun, not her machine gun-she had left that back with the Charmings, useless without ammo- but her handgun still has a few rounds left in it and she reaches to pull it from her waist. She holds it up, aims to send brain matter flying, only one walker is hardly a threat these days, but she hesitates, the pitch of its gurgling increasing in intensity as it hobbles over to her. She narrows her eyes in thought and drops her gun to the forest floor beside her. She isn't going to deposit this walker so easily. She is angry. Furious at life and herself and the Governor and the hoards of the undead that had turned her life to shit. This walker is going to suffer the consequences of screwing with Regina Mills, a punishment she hadn't yet been able to dole out upon this forsaken world.

Squaring her shoulders and clenching her fists, she holds her arms out wide toward the creature, beckoning it to come for her. "Fucking try me," she baits, setting her feet as the walker quickens its lurching. It lunges and she kicks, her foot landing squarely at its gut, knocking it backwards a few paces. Oh, that felt good. That was for Henry. When the walker comes at her again, she grabs hold of an arm and twists, the sound of bones snapping incredibly satisfying. That was for Emma. With a hard yank, the arm comes free and the walker is off-kilter, stumbling as she whacks it over the head with its own detached limb. That was for Snow, and that- kicking the creature in the knees to force it to the ground- that was for David. She throws the broken arm to the side and kneels on the walker's hollowed chest, grabbing at its one remaining hand and snapping it at the elbow. She unsheaths her knife and plunges it into its shoulder, slashing across to its neck and up, toward its jaw. She yanks the blade free and sends it plummeting into the thing's face, stabbing and stabbing and that's for Hook and for Henry and for Leroy and for Ruby and for Henry and for Snow's son and for Henry and for Neal and for Henry and for Henry and for Henry. She doesn't stop until the face is only a mess of flesh and blood and she herself is covered in a fair amount of brain matter and guts.

She's breathing heavily when she finally stops, the sudden silence a stark contrast to the noise of the violent encounter that had just occurred and she supposes, in hindsight, that she's rather lucky she stopped when she did because otherwise she wouldn't have heard the second walker come up behind her just before it reaches for her and she wouldn't have turned around just in time to push it off her, her knife flying away from her in her defense. She twists, trying to stand so she can retrieve her gun from where she had dropped it earlier, but her legs get tangled in the torso and arm of the first walker and she falls back on her ass on the ground with an oof.

The second walker has righted itself by now and it lurches toward her again, causing her to scoot backwards, still in a sprawled sitting position. It falls on top of her, all biting teeth and scratching nails, and she has to fall completely on her back now as she uses both hands to try to hold it off her. Her heart is pounding, teeth clenched tight, but her mind is thinking of course this is how she goes. After feeling slightly victorious for a split second, only to realize her folly a moment later and to see death staring her in the face in the form of yellow teeth, sunken eyes, and decaying flesh.

She struggles, trying to hold off this hungry death with whatever strength she has left, but slowly its face is getting closer to hers despite her efforts and she wriggles, she writhes, she squirms, she _fights_ against this monster trying to claim her as its own, but somewhere in the back of mind, she hears a tiny voice that whispers _stop fighting, embrace it, Henry will be waiting for you_. It's almost what she does, gives in to that small suicidal thought that flickers through her brain, but suddenly, a fresh coat of brain matter splatters against her right cheek and she opens her eyes fully to see an arrow sticking out of the side of the walker's head, its face now sagging against her chest. The Charmings have impeccable timing.

She takes a few deep breaths, blinking hard in an attempt to forget her life flashing before her eyes, when her brain catches up with what happened and suddenly she realizes. Neither Snow nor David had crossbows when they fled the prison. Who then-

"M'lady," an unfamiliar, accented voice addresses her.

She shoves the walker off her and scrambles to her feet, reaching instinctively for her gun at her waist only to remember stupidly she had tossed it aside. Idiot. She whips around in the direction from which the arrow and voice had come, eyes wide with uncertainty, tension flowing through her tired muscles.

She's greeted by the sight of a man standing a few feet from her, a crossbow slung over one shoulder. She's certainly never seen him before, of that she is positive. She'd definitely remember meeting someone who looked like him- all dark blonde hair, blue eyes, and dimples winking at her. He's regarding her curiously, brow furrowed slightly. She's still breathing heavily, she realizes, and she looks like hell- brain, blood, and flesh covering most of her torso and face. She's surprised he doesn't have his weapon pointed at her.

"Are you injured?" he asks, the lilt of his accent reminding her vaguely of the pirate, but different somehow. If she wasn't so on edge, she'd probably find it strangely soothing.

She doesn't answer, tries to calm her breathing instead. His apparent concern is unnerving. What's it to him if she's injured or not? People don't act this way anymore; what is wrong with this guy? He's probably crazy, she thinks, and whether or not that's a reasonable assumption, she's not willing to take the chance she's right. She glances sideways toward the general area where she dropped her gun before chancing a look at his face. His eyes are trained on the same spot. A split second passes and then they're both lunging for the gun at the same time. Regina grabs it first, but he manages to free it from her grasp and she straightens immediately, stare now fixed on her stolen weapon in his hands. He's holding it, but he's not pointing it at her which is… strange, to say the least.

"That's mine," she seethes, brow quirking dangerously. Stealing weapons is what people do these days. At least he has that part correct.

The man looks down at the gun and then back at her. "That it is," he agrees, a smirk coming to his lips. "And while I'm loathe to take it from you, I'd appreciate not having any errant holes poked through my body." He looks at her expectantly, as if he's waiting for a reply or an explanation, but she remains obstinately quiet, and if looks could kill, he'd be a dead man. "You know, a simple thank you would suffice for saving your life."

Her eyes narrow further. "I didn't need saving."

His eyebrows shoot up in mock disbelief and he gestures toward the recently disposed walker behind her. "Didn't you? Because I'm pretty sure you were about to be that son of a bitch's dinner."

She doesn't look back, doesn't dare break her gaze from this strange and oddly infuriating man or his weapons. Saving her life once doesn't mean he wouldn't be willing to take it himself. Where has her knife gotten to…

"I had the situation under control," she snaps, realizing that he was once again waiting for her to respond. What, does he want to have an actual conversation with her? Did he not get the memo that the world has ended and people don't _do_ this stuff anymore?

He smirks again and her ire flames up higher, but she's caught off guard suddenly when he flips the gun around in his hand and holds it out toward her. He looks from the weapon to her flabbergasted expression and shakes it slightly. "Here," he insists as if he's surprised at her surprise. "Take it. You said it's yours and it is."

She doesn't need to be told twice before she grabs it out of his hand, turning it promptly around on him, finger hovering above the trigger. His expression doesn't change, merely looks from the end of the barrel to her, unphased. What is _with_ this guy, Regina wonders. She wants a reaction, damnit. "If you're smart, you'll put the crossbow down," she warns, eyeing the weapon suspiciously.

The man glances vaguely over his shoulder. "You think I'd use this on you?" he asks, a note of incredulity to his voice. Regina's face remains stern, warning, daring him to test her. He sighs a tad bit dramatically and shrugs the crossbow off his shoulder and tosses it gently to the side. He puts his hands up casually in the air. "You don't have to be afraid of me, you know. I'm not going to hurt you."

"Who said I was afraid?" Regina murmurs dangerously, her pounding heart betraying her words. "I'm thinking you're the one who should be scared."

The man cocks his head at her, the curiosity returning to his gaze. "Are you out here by yourself?"

Well, technically, yes she is, but also technically no, she's not because Snow and David are probably not _that_ far away, but she can't really be sure because how long had she even been walking? "Got a camp within shouting distance," she lies, finger remaining just above the trigger despite the ache growing in her arms.

The man's eyebrows quirk just slightly. "Really? And just how long has your camp been 'within shouting distance?'" he asks, sounding more curious than patronizing, but it irritates Regina all the same.

"Probably a month or so, can't really remember. You get established pretty quickly when there's a lot of you," she fibs, wishing she didn't feel as if he could see straight through her. No one gets past her walls when she builds them. Well, Henry certainly did, but-

"Well that's curious since my own camp has been around here for much longer than a month and yet we haven't crossed paths with yours until just now," the man leads, his tone shifting to slightly playful, not mocking, but definitely as if he's cottoned on to her lie. "Makes you wonder how that could be."

"We don't venture out much," Regina covers, feeling the straws she was grasping at falling away and he is _smirking_ again, damnit, why is he always smirking?

He chuckles and the back of Regina's mind thinks it likes that particular sound, but he's a stranger who likes to make conversation in the middle of the woods and gives back weapons after stealing them and kills walkers for people he doesn't know and why hasn't she just shot him and moved on yet?

"You're a pretty good liar, you know," he tells her after his chuckling dies down. "But I'm a pretty good lie detector and I know you don't have a camp around here because my group has covered these woods countless times in the past month and we've never encountered such a settlement. So tell me, are you really out here all by yourself?"

"What's it to you?" Regina demands, a hint of indignation in her voice. Because really, it's not his problem. _She's_ not his problem and he is most certainly not hers.

He looks surprised again, curious once more at her anger over his concern. "Because it's not safe to be alone anymore. No one can make it on their own out here. And if you truly are by yourself, I was going to ask if you'd like to come back to my camp with me," he explains, the sincerity in his voice undeniable.

Well that certainly catches her off-guard, but then again, everything about this guy is catching her off-guard. "And just why do you think I'd want to go anywhere with you?" she asks, subconsciously lowering her gun between them.

He shrugs. "Mutual want for you to stay alive?"

She scoffs at that, a ghost of a smile pulling at her lips. "I don't need you to keep me alive."

"Yes, as I see you were doing just fine on your own," he replies, one eyebrow raising as he glances again toward the walker his arrow is currently still sticking out of.

"Isolated incident. Won't happen again," she answers stiffly.

"Oh, of that I'm certain," he agrees, his tone unreadable. He looks her up and down and she suddenly is hyperaware of the blood and guts drying on her torso and arms. He sticks his hand out between them suddenly, palm open toward her. "Name's Robin, by the way."

She looks at his hand as if it belonged to a walker. He wants a handshake. It's the goddamn apocalypse and he wants a flipping handshake. He also, apparently, wants her name and she'll be damned if she ever-

"Regina!"

Snow should be given an award for her impeccable timing, Regina thinks angrily, gritting her teeth at the sound of her stepdaughter's approaching footsteps. She glares at Robin's triumphant look.

"Regina!" Snow says again breathlessly, coming up beside her and placing a hand on Regina's bicep. "Are you alright? David and I were so wor-"

"I'm fine, clearly," she snaps, shoving her gun into her waistband.

Snow gives her a once-over, regarding the state of her clothing and limbs before turning her attention to the man standing in front of them. "Who's this?" she asks, caution and tension entering her voice.

The man smiles- goddamn dimples- and extends his hand toward Snow, apparently assuming she'll be more willing to engage in such pleasantries than her stepmother. "Robin Locksley at your service."

Snow looks from his hand to Regina's annoyed expression before cautiously extending her own hand. "Mary Margaret… Nolan," she greets, a smile suddenly blossoming on her face. The use of her alias reminds Regina that they must be careful now. They aren't with _their_ people anymore. "Did you have a hand in taking down these two suckers?" Snow asks, gesturing toward the disposed walkers behind them.

"Well, I did handle the one, however, _Regina-"_ he smirks at the use of her name, "-took out the first one by herself," Robin explains, reaching down to pick up his crossbow from where Regina had made him drop it earlier. His action makes Regina's fingers twitch instinctively toward her own weapon, but she forces herself to stop. He hasn't done anything to warrant her suspicion, she thinks begrudgingly. He's annoying, that's for sure, but so far not dangerous.

"This is why you shouldn't venture out without letting me or David know," Snow admonishes, irritating Regina even more.

"Of course, _Mom,_ how incredibly thoughtless of me," she seethes, patience and temper just about spent for the day. "Maybe next time you can come with me and we can both get eaten by walkers."

Snow gives her a look, one that says now is not the time to behaving like a petulant child, but damn it, today has been just about the longest and worst of her life. Being pleasant isn't high on her list of priorities anymore.  
Snow looks back to Robin and offers an apologetic smile. "Thank you for helping," she says graciously, earning an indignant eye roll and scoff from Regina.

"It was no problem," Robin assures with a slight nod. He looks from one woman to the other. "So it's just you two, then? Well, you two and this David fellow?"

"My husband," Snow explains. Her demeanor significantly changes as she swallows. She blinks rapidly, eyes falling to the ground. "And yes, it's just the three of us. Now, anyway. There… there were more of us."

Regina closes her own eyes and turns her head away, the reminder of her loss feeling like a punch in the gut. She had forgotten, for a moment, but just a moment, that Henry was gone and how could she ever forget her sweet boy? How could she ever stop thinking about him? The thought makes her want to vomit.

Robin exhales heavily. "I'm terribly sorry," he sympathizes and he sounds incredibly genuine, empathetic. "For whatever losses you suffered, I gather, quite recently."

"Just this morning," Snow whispers, her voice thick with emotion. She sniffs and jerks her head, either to move her hair out of the way or shake away tears. "There had been about forty of us. But we were attacked by another group and…" She shakes her head. "It's just the three of us now."

"My condolences," Robin apologizes again. "I know the pain of experiencing such a loss. There are no words to make it better." Snow shakes her head in agreement and a silence settles over the trio for a moment before Robin speaks again.

"Seeing as it is just the three of you, I was just telling Regina that my camp is less than a mile from here. You'd be more than welcome there."

Snow opens her mouth in surprise as if she was going to speak before looking toward Regina. "Oh, well, um, that's very kind of you, but I'm not entirely sure that's a good idea."

"Well, at least we agree on that," Regina snips, crossing her arms.

"I'm not asking you to join us, but night will be falling soon and pardon me for saying so, but you don't seem too prepared to weather it," Robin explains. "We have food and fire and space for you to sleep. I'm sure everyone would be most welcoming."

Snow looks at Regina again, a tentative smile on her face. "Well, that does sound nice…"

Regina whips her head around to look at her stepdaughter. "You want to go with a complete stranger into the woods to a place that might not actually exist? Did the cellblock exploding rattle your brain?"

"Regina, I don't think we have much of a choice at this point," Snow counters. "Robin is right, we are completely unprepared for the night. Finding numbers might be our best chance."

"And like I said, staying the night doesn't mean you have to stay forever. Just take the night. Be safe, get some well-needed rest and food in your stomachs and then come morning, if you still wish to leave, no one will stop you," Robin assures with a nonchalant shrug.

Snow chews her lip in thought and Regina rolls her eyes with a grumble. They _are_ woefully unprepared for the terrors of the night, but _why_ , why did their saving grace have to come in the form of blue eyes and dimples? And annoying smirks on top of it all. She shoots Robin a glare for good measure because she knows Snow is a second away from agreeing and he grins in response, victory sparkling in his eyes. So that is how she ends up trekking through the woods with her stepdaughter, stepson-in-law, and a complete stranger, heading toward the unknown to spend the night when all she really wants to do is lie down right there on the forest floor and let the walkers take her to Henry.

* * *

Machine gun, riot gear, machete. Every single weapon and defense mechanism Hook could round up from whatever was abandoned in the cellblock now covers his person. He's going to need all of it if he's to make it out of this prison alive with all those walkers waiting just outside. He shrugs his backpack on, grunting slightly at the added weight pulling on his sore muscles and wishes, not for the first time, that he could just lay down and sleep for hours. But he can't, not when Emma and Henry and the Charmings and everyone else could still be alive somewhere. They could still be alive now, but in a few hours they might not be so there is no time for luxuries such as sleeping.

He closes the cell door behind himself out of habit, ready to face the corpses waiting for him beyond the walls, but the sound of glass clicking with metal stops him. He looks down by his foot and sees a bottle lulling back and forth by the corner of the door. The bottle of rum David had snagged for him while on a run a few weeks back. It's still half-full. He hadn't drunk it with as much gusto has he had in the past. Going so long without alcohol had significantly decreased his tolerance for the stuff and being drunk these days doesn't really bode too well for survival. He's about to leave it, not really having a use for the mind-numbing swill anymore, but then an idea strikes him and he picks the bottle up, notching it in a pocket on his backpack.

Right, then. To outside and hopefully, not entirely certain death. He climbs the steps to the bridge door and pulls the cover on his helmet down. He probably looks ridiculous, but that doesn't exactly matter right now. One final, steeling deep breath and then he's pushing open the door, blinking in the sunlight and gritting his teeth against the unpleasant sounds now assaulting his ears. Stepping out onto the broken concrete bridge that once connected this cellblock with the administration building, his appearance does not go unnoticed and soon a dozen walkers are reaching up for him, snarling and snapping from below the ledge. Well, here goes nothing.

He jumps down into the middle of the group, his limbs and chest protected by the padding of the riot gear, but he can feel the undead fingers scratching and pulling against his armor. He elbows and shoves and knees his way forward, slowly and with the added weight of corpses hanging on to his backpack. One walker in particular gets right in his face, hanging skin and sunken eyes filling Hook's vision and blocking his view until he takes his machete and shoves it upward through its neck out the back of its head. He pushes the body of the deposited walker to the side, yanking his knife free and pushing the body into several other walkers, clearing a path and allowing him to break free from the pack.

Sprinting forward, he leaves the group behind to stagger after him and he can see the gate he needs to run through, just past the abandoned tank and a handful of walkers feasting on what Hook hopes to be the bodies of the Governor's forces. He's home free, he thinks, sprinting toward the fence. Once he gets through that gate, he just needs to navigate the field without running into a group of walkers and then he'll be able to make it to the cover of the woods.

He knifes one walker coming up on his left and yanks his machete free, the red of the blood mixing with a shock of orange just a few yards away. Wild orange curls, a pale face, light blue shirt, and a pair of very alive lungs sit behind the locked fence of the garden. So one of the Governor's people survived the battle. At least, he thinks it's one of the Governor's people as he's never seen her before, but he can't really see her face. She's sitting, hugging her knees to her chest, gun held loosely in hand and her eyes are blank, cast downward. She looks shellshocked. _Don't worry about her, she's not your concern, she was with that asshole,_ he thinks as he turns to move past the garden and leave the fleeting thought of her behind.

 _We can all come back from this. We are not too far gone._

Emma's words suddenly shout in his mind and fuck, why does she have to remind him of his conscience even when she's not here? He can't go back for that girl, he has to keep moving, he needs to find Emma…

Then he's turning and climbing the three steps to the garden and throwing open the fence and yanking the gun easily from her hand. _Damn it, Swan,_ he curses as he discharges the mag from the handgun and raises an eyebrow when he sees it's fully loaded.

"It's full," he says, looking down at the girl with an air of authority and suspicion. "You didn't fire a shot."

She shakes her head, keeping eyes focused on the ground in front of her. She looks to be maybe nineteen, twenty? Her face is pale and empty, eyes glassed over. "I… I couldn't," she murmurs, voice barely audible above the growing gurgle of the mass of walkers coming in their direction. They're catching up to him, he needs to get out of here.

If she didn't fire a shot, then she isn't technically directly responsible for the blood of any of his friends or Emma and she seems remorseful enough and he really does need to get a move on… "Alright. Come on," he says, holding out the gun for her to take.

She looks up at him for the first time, brow furrowed and blue eyes wide in confusion. "But I… I was with them." He registers her accent for the first time and the back of his mind places it in one of those lands across the sea Emma had told him about. Scotland, was it? That's unimportant, this is all unimportant.

Hook chews his lip in order to keep his patience. "Yeah. Yeah, you were, but unless you want to sit here and just wait for death to meet you at this fence, then you'll probably want to come with me."

She looks from her gun in his hand to his face before tentatively reaching out and taking the weapon back.

"Good lass. Now, you need to do exactly as I say, got it?" Hook orders, reaching around to pull the bottle of rum from the pocket in his backpack. The girl nods as she stands, brushing dirt from her jeans. "Right. Rip me a piece of your shirt."

The girl cocks an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

Hook uses all his willpower to refrain from rolling his eyes. "I need a bit of fabric and I can't exactly reach my shirt under all this gear. So rip me the hem of yours." His logic apparently makes sense because she obeys (a little too slowly for Hook's liking, the group of walkers is only a few yards from their perch by now) and he stuffs the strip of fabric into the half-full bottle of rum, letting a tail stick out the neck. He reaches in his pocket and finds the lighter he had taken from Leroy's cell.

"Get ready," he instructs, flicking open the lighter and setting flame to the end of the piece of fabric. He steps back with his right foot and then hurls the bottle over top of the fence and right through the broken windshield of an abandoned car a few yards away. As soon as the main cabin of the car ignites, the walkers filling their nearby surroundings start lurching toward it, all interest in the breathing pair forgotten.

Hook throws open the gate and runs down the steps, hearing the girl's footsteps behind him. He deposits a walker a few feet in front of them and hears the bang of the girl's gun as she does the same to a biter coming up beside them. _Well, at least she's a decent shot_ , he thinks as they make a break for the open gate leading to the field. They each take care of another walker on the way and then they run toward the cover of the woods, keeping the road to their left as they go.

They're going blind, he realizes, as they stumble through the brush. He has absolutely no idea where Emma could be or even in which direction she might have gone. There was the bus, he remembers, but Emma had been in the cellblock during the explosion and surely she hadn't made it to the bus before it left? She'd stick close to the road, he thinks. Not right near it because then she'd be a walking target, but close enough that she'd be able to keep her bearings and circle back to the prison if she needed to. So that's a plan, at least, he thinks, nearly tripping over a root in his haste.

"Whoa, careful," the girl says, reaching a hand out and grabbing his bicep to keep him upright.

The world spins for a moment and he pinches his eyes closed to regain his balance. _You nearly just died this morning from that bloody sickness,_ he reminds himself. This is the first time he's been back on his feet in three days. It'd probably be wise to take it easy, he thinks. But Emma-

"You alright?" the girl asks, out of breath and panting as they stop for a moment after his stumble. "You look right pale and shaky."

He swallows, his mouth suddenly like sandpaper. "Getting over a cold," he dismisses, taking a deep breath, trying to find some strength from the fresh air in his lungs.

"We can rest for a second if ya need to," she suggests, looking around to see if any walkers had followed from their prison break.

"No… no we gotta keep moving," he insists, turning to keep going in the direction they had been headed, along the road.

"Why? There aren't any biters about, we can take a breather for a few minutes," the girl argues, belting her gun in her waistband.

A few minutes? No, they don't have a few minutes, they need to keep going, Emma- well, how the hell would she know about Emma? She wouldn't, he supposes and takes a breath to keep his head straight. He needs to hold it together, even as the edges of his vision start to swirl again. "We have to keep going. _I_ have to keep going," he says, bracing a hand on the trunk of a tree nearby to keep himself from swaying. "I need to find Emma."

"Who's Emma?" she asks, tossing her wild curls over her shoulder.

Flashes of blonde hair and bright smiles and melodic laughter run through his mind and he thinks of her sharp wit and clever mind and her unfailing faith in him. Her knack for leading and her care for others and her selflessness all come to mind as ways to answer what should be an easy question- who's Emma? "Everything," he answers, voice soft and slightly choked. "She's everything."

A look of understanding comes across the girl's face and she smiles. "Well then, by all means, let's find the lass," she insists, pulling her gun free again. "That is, if you really feel if you can. It'd be no use to try and find her only to die along the way because you're not one hundred percent."

"No, no, I'm-"

The sound of gurgling cuts him off and he drops his hand from the tree, pulling his gun to the ready. They both turn and see a few walkers emerging from the depths of the woods, stumbling toward them. "It's only a few," Hook reasons, lowering his gun. "Save your bullets." He reaches for the machete at his belt and steps toward the closest corpse. Normally, one walker would pose no challenge, but his balance is off and his vision hasn't stopped swirling yet and so his swing misses, landing in the thing's shoulder instead of its skull. Hook tries again, swings again, and manages to hit the mark, but then he's seeing black dots dance across his vision and a pounding erupts behind his right eye. Another walker comes up beside him and he goes for its head out of instinct, but hits its neck and then it falls to the ground, the redhead girl standing behind it, bloody knife in hand.

"You are not well," she tells him, stepping over the deposited walker to steady him just as he sways backward against a tree.

They're at the side of the road now- how the bloody hell did that happen? The walkers must've pushed them back and he hadn't noticed, he reasons somewhere in his mind- but that doesn't matter.

"I'm fine," he manages, but when did the sky turn green and did the girl always have six eyes? Emma doesn't have six eyes, right? Or maybe she does, he can't really remember because all of a sudden the pounding in his head and the nausea swirling in his stomach are the only things he can focus on and he wonders if the ground has always been this hard as he collapses, head meeting asphalt on the edge of the road. His eyes close as unconsciousness takes over, blocking out the swirling world around him. He didn't know before then that losing consciousness sounds an awful lot like squealing brakes.

* * *

 **I'd love to hear what you guys think! Thanks so much for reading!**


	3. Keep Going

A blood-curdling scream. That is the only thing Leroy can hear as it sounds again and again in his head, over and over Ruby's scream. _Why_ did he leave her? Her and the little prince, why?

The origins of the first scream had been a lost cause- a group of four people under siege by walkers and all of them had been dead, dying, or bitten by the time he had reached them along the side of abandoned train tracks. The last man standing among them- bitten in the neck by the final walker- had let out a defeated cry as he sunk to his knees. Upon seeing Leroy he had pointed toward the horizon. "Follow the tracks," he sighed. "There's signs, a sanctuary they said at the end of the line. It's where we were headed. You can be safe there."

And that's when Ruby's scream had pierced Leroy's ears and he had turned, sprinted back the way he had come, tripping and stumbling over brush, but not caring in the least. Ruby was capable, handy with a gun and a knife, but she was hurt and had the baby Charming with her. He shouldn't have left, he thinks for the millionth time. Who knows what could have happened to cause her to scream so terribly. Walkers, probably, but there could still be Governor minions lurking and if one of them had found her-

He crashes into the small clearing where he had left them and spins around, searching the nearby brush for any sign of Ruby or the prince. Nothing. No living or unliving creature to be seen. Fuck. "Ruby!" he shouts, ignoring the pounding of his heart and the dread bubbling up in his stomach. There's no response, but no blood, bodies, or guts on the ground either, so maybe nothing bad happened. Maybe he's just thinking the worst. But that scream, that was Ruby, no question about it. "Ruby!" he calls again, turning around and around in the clearing, looking in every single direction for some signal.

He hears a rustling then behind him and he spins, axe raised high at the ready. Heart pounding, mind racing, breath heavy- _why_ did he leave them alone- he steels himself, bracing for whatever threat is awaiting him behind the brush when he hears it.

"Leroy!"

Ruby. Inhale, exhale. He closes his eyes for a second in thanks and upon opening them again, sees Ruby stepping out from the thick of the forest, baby prince still nestled in her arms. She looks a little disheveled, but otherwise unharmed and he can't help the small wave of anger that comes over him for getting all worked up about nothing. "What the hell was that?" he asks, going for snippy but landing on weary. "I heard you scream."

"I did scream," Ruby confirms, adjusting her hold on the child.

"What, did the trees scare you?" Leroy grumbles, managing a more irate tone now that his heart has stopped pounding.

Ruby glares at him. "No-"

"Walkers nearly got her."

The new voice is strange, accented and familiar and it takes a moment for Leroy to place it, but by the time Belle steps into view from beyond Ruby, he can't imagine how he didn't recognize it immediately. The dwarf blinks a few times at the bookworm, slowly fathoming her presence in front of him, before he's striding toward her, wrapping her up in a fierce hug. She 'oofs' in surprise, stumbling back half a step at the force of his embrace but then he feels her arm around his back and she huffs out a laugh.

"I didn't think you made it out," Leroy explains, pulling back to look at her, but keeping her at arm's length, hands on her biceps. He tries to remember if he had seen Belle at all that day, but between this morning and now, so many things have happened it's nearly impossible to keep straight the past hour alone.

She looks at him for a moment, face blank, before she blinks and shakes her head. "I, uh, wasn't there. I had been out with Emma on a run and… we had found another car so she headed back to the prison while I did a final sweep," she explains, eyes shifting between Leroy and Ruby behind them. "I got back just after everything… went down."

There's something off about her tone, something uncomfortable, but Leroy suspects it's just because of the hell they've all been put through. "I'm sure that must've been a shock," he sympathizes, releasing his grip on her arms.

She nods. "I couldn't believe it. It looked like a war zone. Did… did anyone else make it out?"

Leroy looks back at Ruby and exchanges a defeated look. "We don't know," he admits, turning back to Belle. "We haven't seen anybody else yet, but we think a lot of people got caught by the rocket launcher."

"A lot of people?" Belle repeats, shifting anxiously. "What… what people?"

Leroy sighs, chewing the inside of his cheek to try and abate the anguish creeping up his throat. "Emma," he starts, looking down at his boot toeing the dirt. "Henry. Regina, David. Snow. And Neal, but the Governor took care of him before it all started. Everyone else, we don't know where the bus ended up or even if everyone made it to the bus."

"Oh my god," Belle breathes, hand going to her mouth. She closes her eyes for a moment, pain washing over her features. "How did you guys make it?"

"We were busy saving the little prince," Ruby explains, stepping closer and holding the baby up as if to prove it. "We weren't near the brunt of the explosion, but they were."

Belle swallows a sob, eyes turning to the child. "So he's… the only Charming left?"

"As far as we know," Leroy nods solemnly. "I don't… I don't know how any of them would've survived that." _I don't know how_ we _survived any of that,_ he thinks, but keeps that notion to himself. It'll be night soon, they better get a move on to find some shelter…

"Well, I'm glad you three made it at least," Belle says through a sad smile, voice still shaking. She shakes her head as if to rid herself of her current emotional state and takes a deep breath. "I suppose we don't have time to dwell on any of that right now, though. We've only got a few hours of daylight left and we better find somewhere to hunker down for the night." She pulls a curved dagger from her belt and points. "I think the train tracks are in that direction. If we follow them, we'll probably come across a town sooner or later. Buildings to stay the night."

 _Train tracks._ "Follow the tracks," Leroy repeats aloud, the dying man's instructions coming back to him.

"What?" Ruby asks, the baby Charming starting to squirm in her arms.

Belle reaches out and takes the infant, holding him against her shoulder as he starts to cry. As she coos and shushes him, Leroy clears his throat. "Follow the tracks," he says again. "The people I found earlier had said they were following the tracks. Said there was a sanctuary at the end of the line, that we could be safe there." He shrugs, pulling his axe free from where he had slung it in his backpack. "Dunno if it's real, but it couldn't hurt to look, right? Anything would be better than what we have right now."

"What if it's a trap?" Belle asks, bouncing from side to side in an effort to calm the little prince.

"I think that's a risk we're going to have to take," Ruby muses, glancing up at the late afternoon sky.

"Then come on," Leroy instructs, gesturing with his axe. He leads the way, cutting back the occasional overgrown bush or twiggy tree as they go. There's a tiny nagging feeling in his stomach, like they should be wary seeking shelter somewhere alien to them, but then again, everywhere is alien to them now. Not every place can be like Woodbury, right? Maybe the folks at the end of the tracks are just like them, maybe they run their place like the Charmings had run the prison. Maybe.

"You never told me what happened back there," Leroy reminds Ruby as they pick their way through the forest. "When you screamed."

"Oh, some walkers found us. It was only three of them, but having a baby in your arms and a bad leg doesn't make easy work," Ruby explains, cutting away a thorny branch that had snagged her shirt sleeve.

"Sorry," Leroy mutters, feeling guilty over the situation not for the first time.

"You didn't know that would happen," Ruby dismisses with a wave of her hand. "Besides, Belle came to the rescue, going samurai on their undead asses."

Belle laughs despite the crying baby still wriggling against her hold. "You're lucky I showed up when I did. Although, I think this little one might've surprised us all with his fighting skills."

"Yeah, he'll be a regular Rocky Balboa," Ruby quips. She grabs Leroy's shoulder suddenly. "Hey, that's something we could name him."

He looks at her like she has two heads. "Pretty sure Snow would have a heart attack if we named her son after Sylvester Stallone. No, we are also not naming him Sylvester Stallone."

"You two are thinking of naming him?" Belle asks, switching her hold on the infant so he's cradled in her arms.

They both look sheepish at the same time. "Can't keep calling him the 'little prince' for the rest of his life, now can we? And I mean, Snow and David aren't around to name him anymore, so…" Leroy trails off, feeling as if they might be overstepping their boundaries for some ridiculous reason.

"No, no, I totally get it," Belle assures him as they reach a break in the trees, the stretch of train tracks going infinitely to either side appearing in front of them. "He deserves to have a name of his own."

"Yeah, we just don't know what," Ruby sighs as they step up onto the tracks and then stop. "Which way?"

Leroy looks from either side and points to the right. "That's the way the guy said. Guess we're going to have to take his word for it."

"Or not," Belle muses, walking toward a post about fifty yards in front of them in the direction Leroy indicated. As they get closer, he can make out what appears to be a map, several dark lines starting at different places but ending at the same point marked with a big star. When they're right in front of the post, the words sprawled across the top and bottom become easier to read:

Sanctuary for all.

Community for all.

Those who arrive survive.

Terminus.

* * *

Henry hasn't spoken to her since their argument just after fleeing the prison and it's driving Emma crazy. She's tried to get him to talk, asked about his shoulder (which was still bleeding from being cut by some piece of debris) or if he was hungry or if he needed to stop. Obstinate silence had been the only response to all of her inquiries and she is just about at her wit's end.

They've found a neighborhood, completely abandoned but mostly in tact. It looks like families with old money used to live here, Emma thinks, as they stroll down the main road. Most of the houses are large and white with big wrap-around porches and trees lining the paths in the front yards. Old fashioned lamp posts run along the sidewalk and she gets the vague impression that the neighborhood would look like something out of _Lady and the Tramp_ if it hadn't been abandoned.

It's getting dark, though, and they need to find a place to stay the night. She stops in front of one of the white houses tucked behind two large sycamores and nudges Henry on the shoulder. "This one is as good as any," she says when he only slows his pace. "We need to stop. It's nearing nightfall."

Henry stops walking and turns to look at the house. He shrugs and starts walking up the front path, pulling his revolver from his waistband. Emma follows, glancing behind as she goes. They haven't encountered any walkers for awhile and that makes her suspicious. They never get so lucky.

Henry slowly opens the front door and they both stand on the porch, peering into the living room, weapons at the ready. There's no noise, no movement anywhere. Just an abandoned, ransacked house where normal people once lived. Emma bangs on the doorframe with the butt of her gun and listens for any stirring within the depths of the house. She plans on giving it a minute, just in case some walker is at the very back of the structure, but then Henry is charging through, stepping over the threshold without giving her a second look.

"Henry, wait! There could still be one of them in the back," she hisses, staying on the porch.

Her son sighs, irritated and angry. He turns to face her with a look of condescending frustration. "They would've come out by now," he argues.

"You don't know that. It's a big house," Emma counters and since when does she allow an attitude like that?

Henry rolls his eyes and walks over to the nearest door frame. He bangs a fist on the wall. "Hey, asshole!" he shouts into the house, calling for walkers but looking at his mother. "Hey, shitface! Come out, come out wherever the hell you are!"

Well, that does it. Emma stalks into the house, fury bubbling up and spilling over. "Watch your mouth," she seethes. Henry narrows his eyes defiantly. "And check your damn attitude at the door," she snaps, hands shaking with anger. "You can be pissed off, you can be miserable, but you _cannot_ blame me for this. What happened is not my fault and I'll be damned if I let you keep treating me like it is!"

Henry remains silent, keeping his eyes trained on her face.

"Now whether you like it or not, we're stuck with each other. It's just you and me now and unless you plan on getting us both killed with your moping, I suggest you save your fury for when it won't leave us dead."

"You think I'm _moping_ over this?" Henry yells and yeah, that probably wasn't the best word choice, but he had only been a hair shy of going full-on emo teenager and she had had it.

"You think I'm pouting over my entire family getting murdered in one day?" he continues and shit, shit, shit, this isn't where she wanted them to go.

"Henry-"

"You might be able to just move on and forget about them, but I can't!"

"That is not what I-"

"Sure it is! You want to move on and forget because if you think about it, if you remember then it's going to hurt too much and God forbid you ever _feel_ anything for anyone!"

Emma's rather dumbstruck by that one. Certainly Henry doesn't think she feels nothing for him, for the family they lost? This is just the grief talking, right? It has to be.

"So yeah, I'm going to _mope_ and be angry and shout because I just lost _everyone_ I care about and that's how people deal with shit like this," Henry snaps. "You should probably try it."

"Henry, of _course_ I feel something for the people we lost. How could you think I don't?" she pleads, reaching a hand out to touch his shoulder.

He shrugs it away. "Because you're acting like nothing happened! Like everything's just normal."

"Yeah, because that's what you _have_ to do to keep surviving," she explains, feeling as if she's finally getting somewhere with him. "Don't you think I've wanted to just lay down on the road and cry? That I wanted to run back to the prison with the tiny hope that someone is still alive and maybe find them again? I have been twisted up in knots this entire time but I haven't let it stop me because I need to keep _you_ safe." She steps closer, keeping her gaze steady on his. "What you're feeling, I promise, I'm feeling all of it too. But I still have you. We still have each other and until something happens to change that, you are the only thing I care about."

Henry sniffs and looks down. "Mom used to say that," he murmurs, voice heavy with a cacophony of emotions. "When this all started, she told me she'd do anything to keep me safe because I was the only one she cared about." He looks up and the tears in his eyes make Emma realize she has some of her own blurring her vision. "I don't… I don't think that's true. I think she cared about all of us- you, me, Grandma and Grandpa… Dad…"

He trails off as tears start to trickle down his cheeks and Emma pulls him to her, holding his head to her chest. She tilts her head back, trying to keep her own tears from falling, but knows in the end it's useless. "I know, kid," she whispers, hand stroking through his hair. "I know."

"He just killed Dad," Henry hiccups against her chest. "Just like that, like he meant nothing. How could he do that?" He shakes his head, hair tickling the underside of Emma's chin. "All this time running from walkers, you forget what people do. What they've always done."

Emma sniffs and rests her cheek against the top of his head. "The Governor might not have known what your dad meant to us, but we do. And we have to remember that, remember him. We have to remember everyone and what they meant to us." She pulls back and kisses his forehead. "They're why we have to keep going. If we don't remember them, if we don't fight for them, then no one will. And they deserve to be remembered."

Henry wipes his nose on the back of his sleeve and nods. "Yeah," he agrees, voice shaking. "We gotta keep going. Mom would want us to keep going. So would everyone else."

"And so we will," Emma declares, reaching her hand up to cup his cheek. She kisses his forehead, uncaring that his face is covered in dirt and soot and blood. The prison is behind them. They can't go back now, but they can go forward, wherever forward may lead. They can't stay here in this house forever, it's merely a stopping point for now, but once they find their strength again, they'll keep going. There has to be something else out there. Not everything can end in death and destruction, right? It's dangerous to hope such things these days, but if there's one thing Emma has learned from her mother, it's that sometimes hope is the only thing left to hold onto in a world of misery. So she'll hope. She'll hope there's something waiting for them in the forward, something good and permanent. Henry deserves that. Maybe she deserves that too.

"We need to find food," Emma says after a long moment. "And weapons and any supplies we can muster."

Henry nods. "Right. I'll take downstairs, you take upstairs?"

"Sounds like a plan," Emma agrees. "Shout if you need anything."

They go their separate ways, Henry heading toward the kitchen and Emma climbing the stairs. Twenty minutes later, they convene back in the living room, different sized hauls in hand.

Henry displays his findings proudly on the couch, keeping one hand behind his back. "I found some knives, a few half-used bottles of water, and bag of opened cornflakes and-" He pulls his hand around and beams, revealing a rather large can of something. "Sixty-four ounces of chocolate pudding. Unopened and not expired. The jack pot."

Emma laughs and reaches for his treasure. "Chocolate pudding, huh? I don't know how nutritional and sustaining that would be."

Henry shrugs. "It's better than the boxes of powdered jello I found. Can't make jello if you have no way of cooling it so it'll set."

Emma starts to laugh again, but then stops, her smile faltering. It's stupid, getting sentimental over a dumb thing like jello, but Killian had hated jello from the moment he tried it and she had always found it so amusing that he hated a children's food so vehemently. She swallows, face flushing as a realization hits her. This is part of her reality now. Their reality, hers and Henry's. Everyday, little things, dumb things will be reminders of the people they loved and lost, pain refreshing over and over again.

"Mom?" Henry interrupts her thoughts, concern flashing across his face. "You okay?"

Emma musters a smile and nods. "Yeah, I just… was thinking about something." She shakes her head to clear her mind, reaching down to show her own haul. "I didn't find any food, but I did find some cords we can use to tie the door shut tonight. Other than that, upstairs was pretty much wiped."

"It doesn't seem like anyone's been in here for awhile," Henry observes, glancing around. "People must've hit this place right as everything started and then left it to rot."

Emma smirks. "Hey, this is the nicest house I've ever been in. Well, except for Regina's place. Nothing can top her house."

Henry chuckles and reaches for the bag of cornflakes. "Yeah, Mom knew how to keep a house, that's for sure." He plops down on the couch and pushes the knives and chocolate pudding over, patting the newly cleared cushion for Emma to sit.

She does, reaching for a knife and examining the blade. It's a little dull, but nothing a few swipes along a rock won't fix. She tosses the weapon carelessly to the side, taking the bag of cornflakes when Henry offers. They're stale, but food is rarely fresh anymore. She passes the bag back to him and wipes her hands together to get rid of the crumbs.

"So what now?" Henry asks, shoving a handful of cereal into his mouth.

"We'll stay here for the night," Emma answers. "Maybe two. Figured we can go exploring around the neighborhood tomorrow and see what else we can find. And then… I don't know. I guess we'll keep moving."

Henry nods, swallows. He crinkles the bag slightly, thumb rubbing against the plastic as he stays quiet for a long moment. "I'm scared to go to sleep tonight," he admits quietly, eyes lowered to his lap.

Emma turns her head to look at him, hand coming up to play with his hair. "Why's that?" she asks gently.

Henry shrugs. "If I go to sleep tonight, I'm going to have to wake up and it'll be tomorrow."

Emma nods slowly, unsure about where he's going with this.

Henry shakes his head. "Tomorrow is going to be the first day of my entire life that I'll wake up and my mom will be dead. And my dad. And my grandparents and the rest of my family. That's what it'll be for the rest of my life. I don't want to wake up and have to remember that they're gone."

Emma exhales and pulls him closer to her, his head falling to rest on her shoulder. She doesn't say anything because there's really nothing to say. He's right. It's going to hurt all over again tomorrow when they wake up and remember. Nothing's going to change that. They might have made peace with the fact that their family is gone, but that doesn't mean the pain has lessened or disappeared. She suspects it never truly will.

* * *

Hook can't remember passing out twice in the same day before. No, wait, that's a lie. Back during his blacker days, when everything sort of ran together in a drunken blur, he definitely passed out multiple times in one day. So maybe that wasn't a lie. He's passed out twice in a row before, he just can't remember doing it.

Regardless, if waking up from passing out once is difficult, waking up the second time is even worse. There's a drum nestled deep within his brain, pounding steady, loud, and sure as the darkness of unconscious starts to fade away. It's quieter than the first time he woke earlier today, no gurgling and moaning from hundreds of walkers to jerk him awake. No, the noise this time is soothing, calming, and there's a gentle breeze coasting around him, cooling the sweat beading on his forehead. He'd be rather content to just stay right here, wherever he is, but the drum inside his brain beats louder, more urgently and he knows.

Emma.

The prison.

Right.

Hook opens his eyes slowly, blinking against the light of the afternoon sky. The _moving_ afternoon sky, the branches of trees sweeping past in a blur. He looks to his left and is greeted by the metal side of a truck bed. That explains the soothing sound and the light breeze. Damn it.

"You had me worried there."

Hook jerks at the sound of the voice, attempting to sit up, but he's stopped by a hand on his shoulder.

"Hey, take it easy," the red haired girl from earlier says, kneeling beside him in the truck bed. She reaches into her bag and pulls out a bottle of water. "Here, have some of this."

Hook sits up more and takes several gulps gratefully. He wipes his mouth and hands the bottle back to the girl, looking around to get his bearings. They are, indeed, in the back of a truck, but it's much bigger than the one David used to drive and they are much higher off the ground. It looks similar to the abandoned trucks they had seen at the military base in Brunswick, way back when.

"I'm sorry about this," the girl starts, taking the water bottle from him. "You passed out after taking down the walkers back there and these people pulled up and I didn't know what to do. The back of the truck seemed safer than the side of the road."

Hook nods and shifts, wincing as pain lances through his hip. "A bus," he grunts, rubbing his eyes. "Did we pass a bus?"

The girl shrinks slightly, avoiding his gaze.

"Hey! A bus," Hook repeats more firmly. "Did we pass one?"

The girl swallows and nods.

"What did you see? The people inside- did you see them?"

Her eyes lock with his as she exhales. "They were all dead," she answers.

A beat passes and then Hook inhales sharply. Right. Well. Dead or not, he needs to get to that bus. "How long ago did we pass it?" he asks, shifting onto his knees.

"Three hours ago."

"Three hours?!" Hook shouts. "Fucking hell." He shuffles over to the back of the cab and pounds on the small window that shows a tiny bit of the interior and the three mystery passengers riding inside. "Stop the truck!" he yells, fist meeting glass repeatedly.

He gets a middle finger from the driver in response.

Hook looks behind him and reaches for his machine gun nestled next to his bag. He bangs the butt of the gun against the window, shouting for them to stop the truck once more. The girl joins in next to him, slapping her palm on the back of the cab and yelling along with him. One well-placed bang of the gun causes a crack to ripple through the glass and then suddenly the brakes are squealing and the truck rolls to a stop.

Hook wastes no time. He scampers down to the end of the truck bed and kicks open the hatch, sliding down onto the ground. He reaches for his bag and gun just as he hears the front doors open, three pairs of feet hitting the asphalt. The girl jumps down from the truck bed and dusts off her knees, straightening when the mystery passengers come around the back.

"Where do you think you're going?" a man, presumably the driver, demands.

Hook ignores him and shrugs on his backpack, adjusting his grip on his gun.

"Where does he think he's going?" the man repeats, directing his question at the redhead.

Hook ignores him again and starts walking back the way they came, listening for and hearing the sound of the girl's footsteps as she hurries to catch up with him. He doesn't have time to make friends. He has places to be and people to find, his mission now a lot harder considering they're three hours away from being anywhere near Emma.

"Hey, I don't know what your lady friend's told you about the special nature of the mission we're on," the man calls angrily, stalking forward and coming up in front of Hook. He holds out a hand to halt his progress. "But this shit is time sensitive and we're already way behind schedule so I need you to turn your ass around and get back in the truck."

Hook looks at him, unimpressed. "I gotta go," he intones, shrugging off the hand the man's placed on his arm.

The man looks from Hook to the redhead and back again, an expression of both shock and frustration on his face. "You know, it seems like neither one of you have been paying close enough attention to the hell we've been living in," the man argues. "So let me tell you how to avoid winding up like just another dead-alive prick. You find some strong, like-minded comrades and you stay stuck together like wet on water." He gestures towards the other two people standing near the truck, another man and one woman. "We need people. The more, the better. We need each other, partner. Even with all the gear on your shoulder, you won't last the night, not by yourself."

Hook glances back at the other two strangers and then at the redhead. She meets his eyes and nods minutely. He won't be by himself after all, it seems. "I'll take my chances," Hook replies, taking another step only to be forcibly stopped by this fucker's hand again.

"I'm gonna have to _insist_ that you hold the hell up," the man hisses. "Believe it or not, the fate of the entire damn human race might depend on it."

Hook angrily shakes off the man's hand, his tolerance for bullshit having just about reached its limit for the day. "What the hell are you talking about?" he demands. He looks toward the redhead. "Who is this guy?"

"I'm Sergeant Arthur Ford," the man answers. He juts his chin toward the truck. "And these are my companions- Gwen Espinosa and Dr. Isaac Porter." Hook glances back and the woman gives a sarcastic little wave. "We're on a mission to get Isaac to Washington DC. Isaac's a scientist," Arthur continues. "And he knows exactly what caused the outbreak."

Well then.

Hook glances back at the doctor standing with hunched shoulders by the truck. He doesn't look like a scientist, but that's neither here nor there. This sergeant guy could be full of shit for all he knows, and it appears neither of them have time to waste on bullshit, but he can't help but wonder…

"Alright," Hook begins, adjusting his backpack on his shoulder. "What the hell started it?" More importantly, he'd like to ask, why is he fighting off undead bodies, trying to get back to the love of his life, struggling to survive on a second-to-second basis instead of enjoying a relatively peaceful life in crisis-ridden Storybrooke? But he can't exactly ask that specifically.

Arthur looks at Isaac. "It's classified," the doctor states plainly.

Arthur nods. "We'd been talking to the muckety mucks in Washington on a satellite phone. The past couple of weeks, nobody's been picking up on the other end." He scratches the back of his head and takes a step closer to Hook. "We saw how you handled those corpses back there. We need people and we could use your help."

Hook exhales. Saving the world is Emma's thing, not his. Maybe if he finds her, they can head to Washington together and see if the bullshit spilling from this guy's mouth is actually true. But not before then. He can't even think about saving the world until he finds his world first. "Sorry," Hook mutters, stepping past Arthur and starting down the road.

The redhead jogs to catch up with him. "I had to get us off that road," she explains. "You were passed out, we were out of bullets, but I know how to get back." She holds out her arm, revealing marker scribbles from her wrist to her elbow. "I wrote down every street, every turn. I'll get you back to that bus."

"It's where Emma would go to look for other survivors, where she'd look for me," Hook explains. "That's where I'm going to go."

"It's a waste of time," Arthur shouts.

Hook stops, trying to contain his snarl. This asshole knows nothing about Emma, nothing about them and their uncanny ability to lose each other and find each other once more. They've done it before. Who's to say they can't do it again?

"Merida told us what happened," Arthur continues, walking up behind them. Somewhere in the back of Hook's mind, he realizes he never learned the redhead's name. "And I'm sorry, but there is no way in hell you're ever go to see this Emma girl again." He pauses and Hook's grip on his gun goes whiteknuckled. "I hate to tell you this, but she's gone. It's not worth you dying too."

Hook's backpack hits the ground with a thud, his gun sliding out of his hand with a clatter. This asshole knows nothing. He spins on his heel, clocking Arthur with a fist to the jaw, knocking the man back a step. He doesn't want to fight, but he'll be damned if anyone tells him Emma's not worth looking for.

Hook shakes out his hand and picks up his backpack again. "She's alive," he states plainly, taking a step down the road. "And I'm going to find her."

Another step and then: "Son of a bitch!" Arthur yells and suddenly Hook's falling forward, the sergeant having tackled him to the ground. A fist connects with his nose and he struggles to retaliate, the sergeant being a lot heavier than he looks. Someone shouts, "Arthur!" and it might be the woman, but Hook's too busy struggling against Arthur's grip to pay attention. He shoves the heel of his palm up against the sergeant's nose, forcing Arthur's grip to loosen enough that Hook can land another punch to his jaw. Two more pairs of hands join the fight- Merida's and Gwen's he realizes later- trying to pull the two men apart and Hook didn't want to fight, but he will if that's what this asshole wants. If he has to fight with his bare hands to earn the right to look for Emma, he will.

Somewhere, among the grunts and shouts and hands hitting skin, there's a distinct popping sound, loud, sharp, and metallic. They all seem to realize it at the same time and they pause, recognizing the sound of gunfire in the silence. Arthur whirls around and jumps up, running back toward the truck. "Isaac! Ceasefire, ceasefire! Stop shooting, damn it!"

Gwen is up and running back as well, and when Merida helps Hook to his feet, he watches as Isaac shoots haphazardly at a small herd of walkers staggering out of the woods. It's obvious the man does not know how to use a weapon because he hits more trees than walkers, the rapid fire of the gun strong enough to turn Isaac around until he's shooting at the truck.

Arthur runs up to him and yanks the gun out of his hands, turning the weapon on the walkers until they all fall to ground, dead once more. He turns to Isaac with a snarl, chest heaving. "What the hell were you thinking?" he demands.

Isaac shrugs. "I apologize if I didn't want to die while you were demonstrating your excessive machoism."

Arthur scowls and hands the gun to Gwen. He looks at the bullet-ridden truck and then squats down, groaning when he checks the undercarriage.

Hook and Merida walk back up to the truck and it's then that Hook hears the sound of something dripping. He crouches down beside Arthur and sees a steady stream of some fluid leaking from underneath the truck. He doesn't know much about vehicles, but he knows that is not a good sign.

"This truck has been through three tours in Afghanistan," Arthur starts through gritted teeth. "It's survived two ambushes, one IED explosion, and a bush fire." He stands and towers over Isaac. "So tell me, how in God's name, you managed to kill it with one round of gunfire?"

Isaac looks down. "I'll admit, my aim and trajectory when handling a semi-automatic weapon leave something to be desired."

"I'll say," Arthur snaps, glaring at the doctor.

Hook glances between one man and the other and then over at Merida. She gives him a nod. "Sorry about your truck," Hook sympathizes. "I hope you make it to Washington." He nods to both Arthur and Gwen and then turns around, walking back down the road once more. A second later, Merida is beside him.

They've walked maybe twenty feet before they hear Gwen sigh behind them. "Well, what the hell else are we supposed to do?" she asks testily, and soon her footsteps have joined their own walking down the road.

"Go to Washington!" Arthur insists. "Save the whole goddamn world!"

Isaac comes up beside him and points down the road. "That way's clear. Who knows what's north? We'll go with them until we find a vehicle and then we'll get back on track." He smirks. "Trust me. I'm smarter than you." He reaches into the back of the truck and shrugs on a backpack before turning and following Hook, Merida, and Gwen.

Begrudgingly, Arthur pulls on his own backpack, grabbing the supply of guns in the back of the truck and slamming the hatch closed. Finally, his footsteps join the others and their party of five heads down the road, back the way they came, looking for a dead girl. Or at least, that's what Arthur believes. Hook, on the other hand, know better. He knows they're looking for Emma. And he knows they're going to find her, alive and looking for him too.

* * *

The camp is small. Well, that's not really fair. Compared to the expanse of the prison, any camp is going to seem small. It's a decent size for the amount of people occupying it, but Regina suspects if there were more than twenty, it would seem quite crowded. Still, it's a nicer place than where she had originally planned on spending the night- just the forest floor.

There are tents in little clusters throughout the camp, some obviously bought in a store, others made of burlap or tarp and a few sturdy sticks. There are barrels of water in the center and clothes lines stretching from one tree branch to another and multiple fire pits scattered about. A six foot high fence made of tied-together logs surrounds the entire perimeter, providing some kind of protection against any foe, but there's a decently sized section where the fence has largely been destroyed.

"You're not the only ones who have had run ins with less than desirable people," Robin had explained vaguely. "We're working on fixing it. Just takes awhile to find logs that are long enough."

Robin had shown them to empty tents, saying the people who had once occupied them were no longer a part of the camp. Whether they were exiled or dead, he didn't say, but their fate doesn't make a difference. Snow and Charming seem intent on staying here with these _people_ who they don't know and can't trust. If Regina cared more, she'd tell them they were being stupid like always. But she doesn't care because it's not going to affect her. Pretty soon, nothing's going to affect her anymore.

She'd be lying, however, if she didn't admit she was affected by the looks people have been giving her. Regina's never glared so much before in her life. Every other minute it seems she has to stave off someone else's curious stare with a look of death. She doesn't know what all these insufferable people find so interesting about her, but they insist on studying her from afar like an animal in a zoo enclosure. Maybe it's her glare that has them so fascinated or maybe it's the dried blood and guts still covering the majority of her torso that piques their interest. Whatever it is, if she catches one more person staring at her-

"So what do you think?" Snow asks, coming up to the large barrel of water Regina's currently standing by.

"I think they all need to find something more entertaining to do than watching us," Regina grumbles, scooping up a fistful of water and scrubbing it on her arm, dried blood becoming liquid once more.

"Yes, well, I'm sure we're a rather interesting bunch to them," Snow muses, dipping an empty water bottle into the barrel. "Robin said they haven't had anyone new in awhile. It's probably just innocent curiosity."

"And if it's not?" Regina counters, snapping her head around to look at Snow. "Maybe they're watching us so they can see how much of a threat we are. Maybe they're waiting to see if we're weak so they can attack us in our sleep."

Snow gives her an unimpressed look. "I highly doubt that."

Regina rolls her eyes and scoops up another handful of water. "You trust people too easily, Sn- Mary Margaret," she corrects herself, eyes darting around to make sure no one heard her name slip. She keeps forgetting their with people who would call them crazy if they said they were Snow White, Prince Charming, and the Evil Queen.

"Robin has given us no reason not to trust him," Snow argues. "He saved your life."

"Yeah, and he can just as easily take it away too, can't he?" Regina snaps, leveling Snow with a worn glare. "I heard you and David talking. You think we should stay here?"

Snow sighs, shoulders deflating. "Regina, we need time before we face the road again. I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to struggle everyday to survive again. This camp is safe and these people are good-"

"You don't know that," Regina interrupts.

"Well, until they prove me otherwise, I'm going to choose to see the good in them," Snow persists.

"That's what gets people killed," Regina snaps, dropping her hand heavily to the edge of the barrel. "You and David want to stay here and get your throats slit in the middle of the night, go right ahead. But I'm not bleeding out with you."

She turns away from the barrel, intent on marching anywhere to get away from Snow, but she's nearly knocked over when a knee-high blur bumps into her as it darts past. A snippy warning to watch out is on the tip of her tongue but dies there when she sees the blur run into Robin's arms a few yards away, an excited shout of "Papa!" ringing through the camp.

Regina's shoulders drop at the sight of the small boy in Robin's embrace, matching smiles and dimples on both their faces. The child couldn't be more than four years old, but it's hard to tell thanks to the shaggy curls hanging down in his eyes. He's a precious little thing, and Regina's heart aches with longing for another boy who had once been just as small.

"My boy!" Robin exclaims, kissing his cheek. "Was your day adventurous?"

The child nods emphatically, hands coming up to rest on both of Robin's cheeks. "Uh huh! Uncle John and I found _fish_ in the stream, Papa! We catched a whoooole bunch!"

"Enough for us to have a grand feast tonight?" Robin asks, tipping his son upside down and eliciting a spew of squeals and giggles.

"Not _that_ many, Papa," the boy answers once he's right side up again.

"Well, how many then?"

"Enough to make a soup that'll fill your stomach so you'll won't be so grumpy all the time," a new voice calls.

Regina turns to see a rather large man lumbering through the open gate of the fence, a long string of admittedly small fish hanging from his right hand. Not only is he large, but he's hairy- long curly hair and beard reminiscent of a character from one of Henry's _Harry Potter_ books. He smiles jovially as he holds up his catches, meeting Robin halfway across the camp.

"Roland found the stream, didn't you, boy?" John prompts, turning to the child in Robin's arms.

"I did! Well, I guess we _both_ found it," Roland replies. He points to the fish. "Uncle John said we can make a whole pot of soup and we'll have enough for tomorrow too!"

"Well, I sure hope so. We're feeding eighteen now," Robin explains, his eyes catching Regina's stare from across the camp.

She looks away at his gaze, unwilling to listen to their conversation if she's the subject of it. She turns back to the water barrel and busies herself with cleaning the front her shirt, feeling Robin's eyes on her back the entire time. Snow, unfortunately, is still standing beside the barrel, no doubt watching the same scene between father and son as Regina had been.

"If that adorable child doesn't speak to Robin's credibility, I don't know what does," Snow states, shoulders squaring with confidence.

"Rumplestiltskin had a child. So did my mother. I wouldn't exactly call them outstanding citizens," Regina grumbles. Although, she has to admit, she hadn't pegged Robin for a father. And if the short interaction between him and his son is any indication, he's a pretty good one.

"Now you're just making excuses."

Regina looks at her coolly. "I told you, Mary Margaret. Do what you want. I'm not going to stop you."

"But you're not going to stay either, are you?" Snow asks, eyebrow raising.

Regina straightens her spine. "What are you talking about?"

"I know that look in your eyes, Regina. I've seen it before," Snow answers. "You want to run. Away from this camp or away from me or just away. Whatever your reason, I know you want to."

"You have no idea what you're talking about," Regina warns dangerously. If she had her magic, sparks would be cracking at her fingertips.

"I think I do," Snow counters. "Because I'm going through the exact same thing." She shakes her head. "I'm feeling the same pain you are, the same emptiness. More than once when we were walking here, I just wanted to lay down and stop. But I didn't. And I won't. I won't because David needs me and you need me. We all need each other and if you run, if you leave us, what chance do any of us have?"

Regina blinks slowly and sighs, turning away from her former stepdaughter. "You have David, you don't need me," she scoffs. "And I don't need you. I don't need a chance. I'm done. Henry's gone and so I'm done. I suggest you let me be."

Snow furrows her brow and opens her mouth to respond, but doesn't get the chance.

"Miladies, I'd like you to meet someone," Robin states as he approaches, no longer holding his son. His large friend follows behind.

Regina turns to face the pair, begrudgingly welcoming the distraction from Snow's scrutiny.

"Mary Margaret, Regina, this is John, my best mate," Robin introduces, gesturing toward his friend. "John, this is Mary Margaret and Regina, two of the three new faces around here."

"Nice to meet you," John greets kindly, extending a hand toward Regina who looks at it like a dead snake.

Snow jumps in and grabs his hand in Regina's place, smiling stiffly at the other woman's rudeness. "Nice to meet you, too," Snow replies. "Thank you for welcoming us into your camp."

John laughs and claps Robin on the shoulder. " _My_ camp? Hear that, Robin? I've overthrown you."

Robin rolls his eyes despite his smile. "I'm not dead yet, John."

"Just doing as the lady says," the large man defends. "I'm afraid you are mistaken, ma'am. This is Robin's camp. I just keep the place from falling apart."

Snow smiles. "I take it you knew each other before everything?"

"Yeah, unfortunately we go way back, me and Robin," John teases, garnering another good natured eyeroll.

Regina rolls her eyes too, irritated at, well, everything. She doesn't want to make friends, she doesn't want to stay here, she doesn't want to worry about surviving anymore. She just wants it to be over. And come nightfall, it will be. Thank god.

"You two know each other before too?" John asks goodnaturedly.

"Yes, we're family, actually. Regina and I are stepsisters," Snow replies, launching into their fake backstories. That had been Hook's idea, way back when, just after they had fled Storybrooke when the walkers had finally overrun the place. They couldn't very well tell people the truth about their complicated family, not with all the curses and magic thrown in, so they came up with something plausible and realistic, something that would keep them family, but without the parts that would get them admitted to a mental hospital.

"My husband David is here somewhere," Snow continues, glancing around.

"Ah, I take it that would be the third member of our new trio, " John gathers.

Snow nods. "Yes, it's… it's the three of us."

John hums his understanding. "Robin told me you've had a rough day. If that's the case, please feel welcome to take whatever you-"

"WALKERS!" someone shouts from the other side of the camp.

Robin and John don't hesitate. They turn and run toward where the warning had sounded, pulling out weapons as they go. Regina stays where she is, looking past Robin and John to see at least a dozen walkers lumbering toward the broken section of the fence.

"We should help," Snow declares, unsheathing her dagger from her belt. She turns and looks at Regina expectantly.

"If you want to get yourself killed for these people, be my guest," Regina answers. "I'm not risking my life for them."

Snow scowls at her. "You are impossible," she snaps before turning and running to join the defense.

Regina, being a reasonably safe distance from where the walkers are attempting to invade, leans against the water barrel and watches the fight unfold, unphased by the threat. There are more walkers than she initially thought and not nearly enough people to defend against them, but they're putting up a decent fight. Snow, ever handy with her dagger, takes down one and then another, blood spewing across her shirt as she goes. Robin fires off arrow after arrow, almost always hitting right between the eyes, and John liberates more than one head from its body with his machete. Other people, ones who have stared at her and ones who haven't, take down their own fair share of walkers with knives or crossbows or baseball bats.

Huh. These people know how to defend themselves. That's something, at least. Snow and David will be safe here. If nothing else, she can find a small bit of comfort knowing she won't be leaving them completely helpless.

There's only a few walkers still standing, the threat mostly diminished, and Regina's about to refocus on cleaning her shirt when something moves out of the corner of her eye. She looks up and her heart stops.

Robin's son- Roland, was it?- stands a safe distance away from the fight, poking his head around a tent to watch his father in action, but the little boy's back is turned and he doesn't see the stray walker stumbling toward him. That is, not until the walker is only a few feet away, snarling and gurgling as it reaches out for him. Roland turns and screams, scrambling backward only to trip in his panic over his own two feet and landing hard on his back on the ground.

Panic sizzles up Regina's veins and she reaches for her knife, her gun, anything, but nothing's quick enough, nothing's going to kill the walker in time, not with how close it is and Roland's still screaming and Robin's turned around, horror on his face, crossbow pointed, but it won't be quick enough, nothing of this world will be quick enough, and that little boy doesn't deserve to die, he's innocent, Henry was innocent and he's dead, but this little boy should live, if Henry can't then this boy should and the panic in Regina's veins is electric now, it's crackling and sparking and no, no that's not panic, that's-

She raises her arms and a beam of energy bursts from her palms, shooting across the camp and blasting the walker into a million pieces just as it falls on top of Roland.

Stunned silence replaces the panicked cacophony of moments before, the entire camp standing frozen in place, Regina staring at her outstretched hands in shock.

Then Robin moves.

He sprints over to his son and scoops him up off the ground, crushing him tightly to his chest as the little boy sobs. Robin repeats over and over that he's safe, that it's alright, Papa's got him.

Regina slowly lowers her arms, eyes transfixed on her palms. That didn't… she couldn't have… how could she possibly…?

"Regina," Snow breathes in amazement from across the camp, the two women's eyes locking on each other in both wonder and fear. "That was-"

"Magic," John states loudly, his face devoid of all the kindness it had held minutes earlier.

Regina swallows, eyes flickering from John to Robin who is staring at her in both bewilderment and amazement.

"That was magic," John repeats, more accusatory than before.

"John," Robin warns, keeping his eyes steady on Regina's. There's something calming about his gaze and if her head hadn't started to spin, Regina might've found it comforting.

"You're from our land?" John demands, marching forward. "Who are you? Some witch? How the hell can you do magic here?"

Regina's temples start to throb and her stomach lurches. These people… they're from the Enchanted Forest. They must be if they recognize magic on sight, but how are they here and who are they and do they recognize her? They can't recognize her, if they do, she's as good as dead. But her magic… how on earth did she come up with that out of nowhere? She hasn't been able to use magic since they fled Storybrooke or at least, she thought she couldn't. What if she could this whole time? What if she had the ability to protect everyone with magic, what if she could have used magic to save Henry?

Panic seizes her again and suddenly she feels trapped. Like an animal in a cage or a freak in the circus, everyone's staring at her. She needs to get out of here, she needs to escape the harsh words and punishing judgements of which she had thought herself finally free. She needs to get away, she needs to run. And so she does. She runs past Robin and his son, past John, past the others, past Snow and into the woods, ignoring calls of her name. She needs it to end. She needs it all to end. And soon, it will. Soon.

* * *

 **Just to clarify, Regina and the Charmings were under the impression that Robin and his people were from the Land Without Magic and had no clue they were actually from the Enchanted Forest. Next chapter will explain what Robin and his people are doing there in the first place.**

 **Also, considering they've left Storybrooke, Regina and Emma both have not been able to use magic because they're in the real world. Until now, obviously.**

 **Please let me know what you think! Questions, comments, concerns, anguish, I'm open to it all. Reviews are like water for writers- we need them to keep going!**

 **Thanks for reading!**


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